Aboriginal title or Legal Personhood for Land?

In 1983, British Columbia granted Carrier Lumber Ltd a license to engage in industrial logging within the territory of the Tsilhqot’in Nation. The Xeni Gwet’in First Nations government (part of Tsilhqot’in Nation) sought an injunction to halt Carrier. For the Xeni Gwent’in, the proposed logging would destroy the forest in which they lived and hunted. In order to gain the power to stop the proposed logging, the Xeni Gwet’in fought for a declaration of Aboriginal Title. After a lengthy trial, the Supreme Court granted their claim. This may sound like a story about victory for the Xeni Gwet’in people. After a long, and hard fought battle, they succeeded in gaining Aboriginal Title. What this characterization misses is that, in order to gain Title, the Xeni Gwet’in had to accept not only the process imposed on them by the Canadian government but also the implicit assumptions that the government relies on to justify its current (and, to a degree, past) relationship with Aboriginal peoples. Thus, Aboriginal Title requires that Aboriginal peoples choose between protecting the land by accepting these assumptions, or rejecting the assumptions but, in most cases, losing the land. In New Zealand as part of the process of deciding land claims, a new option has been added. Instead of granting Aboriginal Title to land, in some cases, the land itself is granted legal personhood. Such an approach de-couples the question of the political relationship between Aboriginal peoples and the government from the fight to protect the land. I argue that there is great value in separating these questions. By doing so, the government can better support the autonomy of Aboriginal peoples and be more inclusive of alternative perspectives This approach (often endorsed in environmental philosophy) will be beneficial to non-Aboriginal peoples as well.